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Low Cost Long Term Care Insurance

National Guardian Life (NGL) is now offering low cost long term care insurance. NGL is offering a new long term care product with premiums up to 50% lower than other LTC companies.

Who should buy long term care insurance?

Long term care insurance provides services and benefits not covered by Medicare. Unlike traditional health insurance long term care plans are designed to cover long term services and supports. These typically include personal and custodial care. Care can be give at home, a community organization or other facility.

Long-term care insurance policies reimburse policyholders a daily amount (up to a pre-selected limit) for services to assist them with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, or eating. You can select a range of care options and benefits that allow you to get the services you need, where you need them.

The NGL Essential plan offers a lifetime benefit.

This benefit provides you with the comfort of knowing you are covered for life with no max benefit period. Joint pricing offers a lower rate for couples applying together. Step rated cost of living adjustment means that you will start with the lowest offered rate. The reverse combo feature combines return of premium with or without a claims offset. An optional surrender rider protects the premium you’ve already paid in to the policy. In addition, if you never use the policy, your beneficiary will receive up to 80% of the amount you paid into the policy. This mimics a life combo policy.

Crowe and Associates is a full service insurance brokerage. We are also Medicare specialists. Click here for a free confidential Medicare quote. If you have questions regarding either medical or long term care insurance, please contact us for an appointment. There is no fee for our services. You can reach us either via phone at 203-796-5403 Or, you can email us at [email protected]

True Freedom Home Care Service Plans

True Freedom home care service plans are designed for consumers who are not currently in need of care but could be classified as in “declining health” which would prevent them from being able to secure a traditional plan.

While loved ones will have the best intentions to be there for a family member who needs assistance, many are not prepared and quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of work involved in giving care. Traditional home health care insurance is an option for such services. However, it is limited to only the extremely healthy, creating challenges for many that do not qualify. True Freedom plans are a viable alternative to traditional home health care insurance. These plans support seniors with their regular activities while providing independence and privacy with at home care

Transamerica has received approval for their Long Term Care rider in Connecticut. They are now able to offer the Trans ACE GUL “Guaranteed Universal Life” product with a long term care rider in Connecticut. Other companies have been able to get approvals for life/LTC combo plans in CT but they are always single deposit products or limited deposit. The Trans ACE is a true GUL policy that can be paid monthly like any other permanent life policy. Adding the LTC rider will increase the premium but the overall rider cost is much less than the cost of buying a stand alone Long Term Care Plan. Highlights and unique features….

Any money not used as long term care is paid out to beneficiaries at death via the plans GUL death benefit.

The cost of the Long Term Care rider is substantially lower than buying a stand alone LTC plan.

If the Long Term Care is never used, the GUL will still pay the full death benefit upon death.

The plan comes with a return of premium feature which returns 100% of paid premiums. The premium can be taken back in year 15, 20 and any year after 25.

We have provided a comparison of the three most competatively priced Long Term Care Policies Available. This is a side by side comparison using Genworth, Med America and Trans America. All three plans listed are partnership eligible and meet parntership requirements in all Partnership states. Read more

Trans America has applied for a national rate increase on all new long term care sales. This will affect new business only and will not change rates for current clients. The rate changes being applied for are substantial and are part of a trend for LTC discontinuance and rate increase from most LTC carriers. Genworth, Mutual of Omaha and John Hancock recently raised rates. Met Life and Prudential stopped selling new plans going forward. To see the average cost of long term care in Connecticut (Click Here)

Read the Press Release below….

At Transamerica Long Term Care, we aim to be a leader in the long term care marketplace. To achieve that objective, we actively manage our long term care business to ensure our programs and offerings align with our core underwriting and business management philosophy. We believe that long term care is a core product that helps us achieve our key objective: “Protecting Families and Their Dreams”.

In fact, Transamerica is currently launching its new Trans Ace product with a long term care rider. And additional chronic and critical care life offerings are currently under development.

Due to the ongoing, historically low interest rate environment and current industry dynamics, we are implementing a series of changes to our current product offerings to ensure that our long term care business continues to grow in a financially responsible manner.

a.

We are filing for an across the board 15% increase on all new business premium rates. The new premiums will apply to all new business sold after the implementation date of the change.

b.

The current spousal discount of 30% will be reduced to 20%. The “married spouse not applying” discount will be reduced from 15% to 10%.

c.

The Preferred Health discount applicable to single applicants will be reduced from 15% to 10% to be consistent with the Preferred Discount applied to married couples.

d.

We are suspending sales of all of our limited pay options, including Single Pay, Pay-to-65, 10-Pay, and 15-Pay. We will no longer accept 1035 Exchanges to our long term care product

e.

We are eliminating the Lifetime (Unlimited) Benefit Period. We will continue to offer all benefit periods up to and including those benefit packages that produce a 6 year benefit period.

These changes will apply to all states.

We will begin implementing the new rates and all of the other changes as soon as approvals are received from the states and Interstate Compact, and new illustration software and marketing materials are available.

As approvals are received, additional field communications will be provided. These communications will include information regarding implementation dates by state, transition timelines and information on availability of new marketing materials and illustration software. This information will also be available on our Agent Resource Center (www.taltc.com).

We will continue to quote multi-life cases using current rates until such time as the new rates are approved. Once the new rates have been approved and implemented, we will only continue the current rates for the limited period of time required to complete an enrollment that has already begun or to honor a Service Group Request form that we have previously approved or an Implementation Memo that we have previously issued.

We believe that the TransCare® II product is and will remain a competitively priced product in today’s long term care marketplace, providing the flexibility you need to tailor a long term care plan to help meet the needs of your client.

Transamerica’s key competitive advantages remain:

1.The 0-Day Elimination Period for Home Health Care and the Cash Benefit.

The document linked to this post provides the average cost for Long Term Care Services in Connecticut for 2012. The breakdown shows cost by service type such as Skilled Nursing home, RN, LPN, Home Health Aide, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy.

The change from the previous year is included and paints a disturbing picture of inflation of these costs year over year. If you have questions about LTC expenditures, Connecticut Partnership programs or options for insuring against long term care costs, please call our office at 203-796-5403 or email Ed Crowe at [email protected]

Average Daily Costs: Skilled Nursing Facility -$368 per day , Assisted Living Facility -$260 a day, Live in-Home Health Care $220 a day

Long Term Care insurance provides needed Protection against the costs of home health care, Skilled Nursing care and institutional care. While there are a number of reasons to purchase a Long Term Care Policy, one of the most important is to protect hard earned assets. If some form of care is needed, the LTC policy will help to cover the additional expense associates with that care and alleviate the need to spend assets in order to cover the cost.

While it is a needed benefit for many, LTC does have drawbacks. The first is the prohibitive cost of the policy. LTC premiums can represent a substantial investment over time and is increasingly expensive for those who purchase it later in life. A second drawback is the risk of carrying the policy for years to ultimately never use the benefits. There are some LTC plans that provide a return of premiums feature but they are restrictive and full of exceptions.

LTC deposit Strategy

An LTC deposit strategy will also protect assets against the cost of Long Term Care and offers major advantages over a traditional LTC policy. The deposit program uses a portion of the investable assets as leverage in the event future Long Term Health Care expenses are incurred.

The money is deposited in a non interest bearing account. In the event that Long Term Care is needed, the money is leveraged by a multiple to cover the cost of care. If Long Term Care is never needed, the account will pay out as a leveraged death benefit. Finally, if the money is needed for some other purpose, it can be withdrawn from the account any time without penalty.

We will use a 65 year old female as an example of how the strategy works

•65 Year old female has $100,000 in a CD or other investment. She has no long term care or has long term care and is paying a high premium for it.

•She can deposit $100,000 into the account which will leverage to provide $435,666 of long term care protection if it is needed. This leveraging starts from the first day the money goes into the account.

•In the event she passes on some day without the need for Long Term Care, the money would be paid as a non taxable death benefit of $233,128.00.

•The $100,000 could be returned to her at any time without penalty in the event her priorities or situation changed causing a need to utilize the money in a different capacity.

Traditional LTC

If she purchased a traditional Long Term Care policy, the annual premium would cost approximately $5,000 a year. She would need to earn 5% on her $100,000 in order to provide the premium payment. In today’s rate environment, it would not be possible to secure a fixed rate at 5%. She would also most likely give up flexibility with the lump sum in an attempt to generate the revenue to pay the LTC premium. Lastly, there would not be leverage provided in the event of early death and a portion of the non qualified account would most likely be taxable.

The final flaw with a traditional LTC policy is the money she may spend on premiums without ever needing long term care. If she lives to her actuarial life expectancy and then passes on without ever needing Long Term Care, she will be paying a large sum of money needlessly. Annual premium multiplied by the number of year s in her life expectancy ($5,000 x 21) would add up to $105,000.00 of premiums paid without any benefit.

In Conclusion

The deposit strategy cannot be utilized by everyone since there needs to be accumulated assets that can be dedicated to the account. For those that have the funds available, this strategy will result in premium savings and added flexibility over Traditional LTC plans.